


The Promise

by RurouniHime



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur Knows About Merlin's Magic, Arthurian, Arthurian canon-compliant, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, Immortal Merlin, M/M, Magic, Not necessarily Merlin BBC canon-compliant, Once and Future King, Or coda, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Pining Merlin, Prophecy, Rebirth, Recovered Memories, Reincarnation, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Stand Alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 14:11:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11163498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: Time to get out of that tree.





	The Promise

**Author's Note:**

> I am still irritated at Merlin BBC season 5, ergo I haven't watched it yet, ergo this fic diverges from that canon. BUT. It draws heavily from canon Arthurian legend.
> 
> **Let's call it a coda of sorts to[Deep as the Wine Dark Sea](http://archiveofourown.org/works/227648/chapters/345227). It fits well enough in that universe, but you don't need to read that fic to read this one.**

The sudden light bloody _hurts._

Thinking at all is like creaking a great wooden machine into motion, trying to drum water up out of a river so that the rest of the mill will run, grind barley or pound salt or something. By all the gods, what is his name again? He can remember how a bloody mill works but not what his mother called him?

 _Emrys,_ the tree whispers, and _No,_ he snipes back, sullen, _that’s not right_. Because it isn’t.

“Hold on, I’m coming, just—” And a crunch. Another crunch. “Just hold on.”

A voice? He cranks open his eyelids—oh, brilliant, he has eyelids, which implies eyes, which means he isn’t a bloody tree. (The tree grumbles at that.) More crunching, a whistling sound. More light spears in, and then someone’s breath catches, and everything stops.

“Shit, you—My god, there’s actually someone in here? I thought I was going insane, how, how on earth did you—never mind, I’ll get you out, just...” Another whistle. Another crack, splintering wood. For the first time, Merlin hears the tree groan.

“Wait.” It croaks out of him, the voice of the frogs in the branches, and then he forgets all about it because, _Merlin!_ That’s it, that is the name! 

_Emrys,_ the grass and the fields and the earth hiss, petulant, but _Merlin_ pays them no mind because he is _Merlin, Merlin, Merlin._

“You’ve no idea,” the other voice goes on, sending waves as red and hot as the sun pounding up Merlin’s spine. “Bloody dream wouldn’t leave me alone. You alright, mate? I thought, you daft idiot, there’s no one inside a fucking tree, what the hell was in that lager? But I just—” Wrenching, tearing wood. “—couldn’t stop. Good thing I didn’t and thank fuck we’re in the middle of nowhere, someone might have carted me off in a straitjacket and then you’d still be in here.”

The light is brighter than ever, but also more bearable than before. The tree groans again, trying to keep it quiet, and Merlin has to stop this. He reaches out—hands, hands too!—and flails around until he grabs hold of something soft and warm, and only then realizes how stupid that was because holy hells, that is _an axe_ chopping away at this tree and then the full heartbeat’s worth of touch finally passes and he forgets everything, even his newfound name.

—gold as treasure green as life red as blood, a death, a loss that snapped his very bones, words he could never ever say, not one of them could give voice to this acute and unending _pain,_ he is shredded all up one side and right through to the center, impaled upon the march of time, nothing could ever staunch this wound, the only thing he wanted to do now was die and love and treachery and _love_ and once and future Arthur _Arthur ARTHUR_

“Merlin?” The voice shakes, so hushed now. On the brittle edge of a chasm. The hand shakes, too, then reaches in and closes round his.

The whole earth gives a mighty sigh of _Finally!_ and all the magic comes rushing back.

It’s every night he ever spent sweating, shaking in Arthur’s arms, the pop and snap of the fire and the scent of ash in his nostrils, the curl of damp hair round his fingertips, every breath hitched from Arthur’s mouth into his. The roar and ring and clarion call of eternal steel, roots pushing like daggers through the earth, hurricanes sighing up into the sky, killing grounds splitting open at their feet, terrible, fiery mouths, every glorious and crooked smile, every pealing laugh, every time Arthur hurled himself between death and an innocent, every single time that Arthur, bloodied and battered and barely alive, threw his arms around Merlin and hauled him back from that plunge into the black. 

That last time, the day before he died: threading their fingers, trapping Merlin’s incandescent and helpless rage with quaking hands just as Merlin aimed to strike down into the bowels of that evil place and force what lurked there to release its hold on Arthur. Any price, he would pay: lives, worlds, futures and goodness and light, _damn you, just don’t take him from me, please, **please,** not him._

(“Swear to me, Merlin,” his lips already bloodless, “don’t go there for me.” Gods help him, Merlin had sworn.)

He sheds the tree and heals it in the same instant, and a boom goes up into the sky and down into the earth. He rights himself on two feet, and looks up.

Arthur is ashen. Arthur’s eyes are bruised and water-clear. Arthur’s hair is tangled, his skin glowing with sweat, his shoulders heaving, and his face— _his face_ —open like the heavens have never opened before. The axe falls from his grip to the ground. He wears blue trousers and a filthy white shirt and a ring on one finger. His hand is a vise around Merlin’s, body heat bleeding between them. It’s not enough. It’s never enough.

“Oh, god, I’ve missed you,” Arthur chokes out, then wrenches the air back in. His eyes fill with tears, but still they stare unblinking, wide and red and seeing everything, understanding everything he has been denied all at once. His mouth works around words he can’t fathom. “I think I’ve missed you for, for _centuries,_ Merlin, _Merlin.”_

But the magic is not done. It writhes and deluges, a joyous avalanche of triumph. The hundreds of lives Arthur has lived and the one life Merlin endured until he could bear it no longer and then rooted himself into a tree and tried to die—it all pours in, fills every pock in their blood and cranny in their bones. Arthur cries out, hoarse, shuddering, weeping, and Merlin is furious. _Mortals can’t handle you all at once like this, you'll harm him, you know better!_

But it is so pure and sweet and clean again. So pleased. Merlin cannot bear to beat it down. He flings himself around Arthur instead, flings his soul into Arthur’s, and bears it with him.

At last, it settles. Merlin’s ears ring, an ominous tone curling up from the center of everything. They part slowly, as though tugging against vines. Arthur looks down at him. His eyes are the ones limned in gold this time, a millennium of pain and emptiness side by side with wonder, with joy. With—

“I never knew. Merlin—” And then Merlin is in his arms, hauled off the ground, his fingers tangling in that gold-spun hair, their mouths met at last, molten gold, their breaths rushing back and forth, gold-spun. Everything about Arthur is gold and sun and wind, a fresh breath stealing over a dying land. 

“You came back,” Merlin sobs against Arthur’s cheek. His lungs hurt, lungs he’d forgotten he had, and his heart, the one he’d willed dead in his chest, throbs like an open wound. “You came back.”

“Of course,” Arthur whispers. He presses his face to Merlin’s throat and inhales deeply, until Merlin knows his lungs are full of _them._ “Always.”

He’s taller. Older. He’s full of the dirt and the rain and the sky, and all of it delights in him. His fingers clench into Merlin’s sides and sweep up over Merlin’s shoulders; he grips Merlin as though to climb inside him. Merlin reaches in, instinctive, seeking any wrongness—a weary vein, a spurred bone, a tiny tangle growing quietly in the corner of Arthur’s brain—and melts them all away with a panicked jerk. 

The familiar taste of death whispers over his tongue and disappears. Merlin trembles. Kisses it away for good in Arthur’s mouth.

The magic curls around them like a giant cat, purring its pleasure. _Look,_ it whispers, _look there, and there._ For the first time in an eon, Merlin does.

And laughs. 

Oh, _there._

He knows where Gwen is, and Lancelot, opposing barristers in Wales about to meet for the first time to discuss their case. He knows where Morgana is, halfway across the planet, collapsing to her knees in a garden lush with crocuses, elated tears streaming down her cheeks. He knows where Leon is, and Gawain and Tyrell and Freya and Percival and Mithian and Elyan and Will and _Gaius,_ oh, he can see his mother, not the mother of this magic, but the one who birthed him and cradled him and named him Merlin.

It doesn’t matter that the skies are choking soot and the ruddy oceans heaving for breath, that even now countries plot to destroy each other, that the land bleeds and the forests wither and the people harden further with each step through this mire. It will all be put right, because Arthur has returned.

“Merlin,” Arthur murmurs, stroking his face. _Emrys,_ the land exhales, and Merlin understands. 

Emrys is not him. Emrys is them, together. Merlin holds Arthur’s face in his hands, leans their foreheads together and, for the first time in years, listens to them breathe. 

And then they turn and look out onto the world. 

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> ...and then suddenly I'm writing Merthur fic! For the first time IN YEARS. What the everloving eff. Anyway, I blame Charlie Hunnam and Guy Ritchie, obviously, for stirring up old and vague fic ideas that have been kicking around in my head for years. (That movie was so much fun.) Also an original project I am currently researching. 
> 
> ALSO also, I've always wanted to write a fic where Arthur finally pulls Merlin out of The Tree. ^_^


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